Cyprus must focus on making the EU’s roads safer

The EU needs to tackle the unacceptably high number of serious injuries on our roads.

European Voice

7/11/12, 9:09 PM CET

Updated 4/12/14, 11:30 PM CET

Your special report on Cyprus’s presidency of the Council of Ministers did not mention an unglamorous yet important priority that it has set itself: road safety (21-27 June).

Cyprus comes to the presidency at a crucial point, as figures from 2011 suggest. According to the European Transport Safety Council’s road-safety performance index (PIN) report, 30,100 people lost their lives on EU roads last year. This is a mere 3% less than in 2010, and suggests that the EU will not reach its target of reducing deaths to 15,500 or fewer in 2020. To achieve that, the death toll will now need to drop by 7% per year.

Several policy dossiers on Cyprus’s table will have a great impact on how safe EU roads can be in 2020.

First and foremost, it is high time that the EU tackled the unacceptably high number of serious injuries on our roads, from around 324,000 last year, based on police records. Political leadership is needed to adopt a common definition of serious injuries. Authorities could also improve their methods of recording serious injuries, by making better use of hospital as well as police records.

We also believe that Cyprus should try to establish a common EU strategy to reduce the number of serious injuries, with the aim of reducing serious injuries at the same pace as deaths.